1. To what extent is packaging important in marketing a product? Give an example of how a package influenced your decision to buy (or not buy) something.
In my opinion, packaging lends an advance taste to a product, the opportunity to preview. I'm not sure that packaging is one of the most important facets of marketing; however, I believe, as the second article stated, that a product's packaging carries much of the "brand promise." The brand promise is the guarantee that a product makes, the need or desire it will fulfill.
Food packaging is very influential to me. I like to eat "visually" almost as much as I do literally. Candy in particular tends to have strongly influential packaging. I generally pick a snack based on what the packaging represents.
2. What other products have iconic packaging?
The Pringles container is extremely recognizable and represents a tasty and beloved brand.
3. What usability issues exist for packaging? Give examples of particularly good or bad packaging from a usability perspective.
Product packaging must be durable yet easily opened. This is difficult because ease of opening might compromise the package's stability. On the other hand, some packaging is excessively durable. For example, as a child, I loved to purchase action figures. Unfortunately, G.I. Joes and other such toys were wrapped in layer upon layer of the stiffest, sharpest-edged plastic one could imagine. It took many frustrating minutes to open and prepare the toy for assembly. Is it really necessary to wrap the plastic toys in so much packaging? I think it was a bad package design.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Gazelle Sports
1. I observed Gazelle Sports in downtown Kalamazoo. The store markets to runners and other endurance-sport athletes.
2.
a. Gazelle Sports is situated in the attractive downtown mall of Kalamazoo. The outside of the store has many long, thin windows. In the windows are decorative displays of merchandise. The store face is a slate-blue color.
b. The store plays fairly energetic, modern music over their sound system.
c. While there is a lot of merchandise in the store, it is well spaced. Shoes, the the store's specialty, are displayed largely on the walls. Gazelle's sporting clothes and other items are generally displayed on racks or tables. These have a wooden theme.
d. The floors are hardwood to match the general theme of the store through the center, carpets to the side.
e. The store utilizes bright, eye-catching posters, usually depicting runners in action or popular brand designs.
f. The cashiers area is located behind a long counter. When you enter the store, the counter is to the front and right.
3. Gazelle Sports conveys a very active, quick-thinking attitude with a personal touch. The store is small and items are laid out in a clearly-marked areas (menswear, womens, etc) to facilitate the easy-finding of merchandise. The store does not carry a huge selection of items; I think this is because they have a very specific clientele in mind and cater almost exclusively to them.
4. Gazelle Sports is primarily a running shoe store. The store's associates are trained to assist customers in finding the perfect shoe, and so patrons are encouraged to interact with the staff. There are many places to sit and try shoes. When you try a pair of shoes, your attending staff member will probably encourage you to take a quick jog around the store.
5. I thought that the store has an excellent business model. They do not cater to high volumes of customers, but are small and depend on repeat business and satisfied patrons. My sister purchases all of her running shoes from Gazelle Sports and would go nowhere else. It was interesting to note the wooden floors and some of the "old-Kalamazoo" features of the store.
2.
a. Gazelle Sports is situated in the attractive downtown mall of Kalamazoo. The outside of the store has many long, thin windows. In the windows are decorative displays of merchandise. The store face is a slate-blue color.
b. The store plays fairly energetic, modern music over their sound system.
c. While there is a lot of merchandise in the store, it is well spaced. Shoes, the the store's specialty, are displayed largely on the walls. Gazelle's sporting clothes and other items are generally displayed on racks or tables. These have a wooden theme.
d. The floors are hardwood to match the general theme of the store through the center, carpets to the side.
e. The store utilizes bright, eye-catching posters, usually depicting runners in action or popular brand designs.
f. The cashiers area is located behind a long counter. When you enter the store, the counter is to the front and right.
3. Gazelle Sports conveys a very active, quick-thinking attitude with a personal touch. The store is small and items are laid out in a clearly-marked areas (menswear, womens, etc) to facilitate the easy-finding of merchandise. The store does not carry a huge selection of items; I think this is because they have a very specific clientele in mind and cater almost exclusively to them.
4. Gazelle Sports is primarily a running shoe store. The store's associates are trained to assist customers in finding the perfect shoe, and so patrons are encouraged to interact with the staff. There are many places to sit and try shoes. When you try a pair of shoes, your attending staff member will probably encourage you to take a quick jog around the store.
5. I thought that the store has an excellent business model. They do not cater to high volumes of customers, but are small and depend on repeat business and satisfied patrons. My sister purchases all of her running shoes from Gazelle Sports and would go nowhere else. It was interesting to note the wooden floors and some of the "old-Kalamazoo" features of the store.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
New Wikipedia Topic
Here is the address to the current Wikipedia article on my topic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Antarctic_Expedition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Antarctic_Expedition
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
The Science of Shopping
1. What points from this article do you feel are most important?
Drawing the connection between the human psyche and human shopping decisions is the focal goal of this article. For example, the first major point in the article deals with our tendency to turn right when entering a store and retailers' attempt to exploit that tendency. We humans are creatures of habit, easily predicted, and Paco Underhill - and the article's author - recognize that beautifully.
2. How much do you personally feel you are influenced by a store's design?
I have never thought of myself as being influenced by a store's design, however I must now consider how I am subliminally affected by retailers' tactics. Do I always turn right? Perhaps. In what stores am I likely to penetrate beyond "Zone 3" or "4?" Certain stores do affect how I approach a shopping trip. When I enter Best Buy, many of the things I am most interested in - interestingly enough many items that are relatively expensive - are placed conveniently along the right-hand path.
3. Make a check-list you could use to analyze a retail store like Paco Underhill does.
1. Layout - The store needs to plan its' zones carefully. A "decompression" zone to begin, low-impact items next, zones of impulse items in the middle of the store, and behind all these "demand" items.
2. Use of space - As mentioned in the article, space is essential to create a particular shopping environment. Space must facilitate how customer's move through a store and how they view items.
3. Sales Associate Training - Although obvious, this is perhaps often neglected or done poorly. I am a thousand times more likely to purchase a product if I am well-attended by a sales attendant.
4. Attitude - Your store must reflect an attitude and mannerism that caters to a given clientele. Certain stores (Hollister, Calvin Klein) excel at selling an attitude to their customers. The space in which they sell reflects that attitude, and it is a winning strategy.
Drawing the connection between the human psyche and human shopping decisions is the focal goal of this article. For example, the first major point in the article deals with our tendency to turn right when entering a store and retailers' attempt to exploit that tendency. We humans are creatures of habit, easily predicted, and Paco Underhill - and the article's author - recognize that beautifully.
2. How much do you personally feel you are influenced by a store's design?
I have never thought of myself as being influenced by a store's design, however I must now consider how I am subliminally affected by retailers' tactics. Do I always turn right? Perhaps. In what stores am I likely to penetrate beyond "Zone 3" or "4?" Certain stores do affect how I approach a shopping trip. When I enter Best Buy, many of the things I am most interested in - interestingly enough many items that are relatively expensive - are placed conveniently along the right-hand path.
3. Make a check-list you could use to analyze a retail store like Paco Underhill does.
1. Layout - The store needs to plan its' zones carefully. A "decompression" zone to begin, low-impact items next, zones of impulse items in the middle of the store, and behind all these "demand" items.
2. Use of space - As mentioned in the article, space is essential to create a particular shopping environment. Space must facilitate how customer's move through a store and how they view items.
3. Sales Associate Training - Although obvious, this is perhaps often neglected or done poorly. I am a thousand times more likely to purchase a product if I am well-attended by a sales attendant.
4. Attitude - Your store must reflect an attitude and mannerism that caters to a given clientele. Certain stores (Hollister, Calvin Klein) excel at selling an attitude to their customers. The space in which they sell reflects that attitude, and it is a winning strategy.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Web Design That Sucks
1. How does this reading relate to the concept of user-focused design that we have discussed in class?
As the author points out in the beginning of his piece, the only reason for your web site's existence (and thus its design) is to solve a customer's problem. This is exactly the driving principle behind any product design. The product exists only to fill a niche in the market, to fulfill some customers' desire.
A good web designer recognizes that, like consumer products, a web site must include affordances, good mapping, and an easily-recognized purpose.
2. What points do you feel are most important?
Point 2, A Man from Mars can't figure out what your web site is about in less than four seconds.
A web site's purpose is to display a given quantity of information in a condensed, easy-to-read format. I am immediately intimidated by a web-site with no clear purpose and lacking a sense of direction.
Point 8, concerning Mystery Meat Navigation. Buttons and links without labels aggravate me. How am I supposed to find what I need? Are the buttons unimportant? What if the ONLY thing I'm looking for is simply unlabeled?
3. Create your own list of important design factors for a webpage.
1. Clarity: A good website is uncluttered. It has few, if any extraneous materials. Advertising is carefully placed and kept out of the way of important content. There is plenty of white or otherwise high-contrast space to keep the viewer's eyes focused on important information. Simple sites look better!
2. Accesibility: I feel that at a good website, you are between 1 and 3 clicks away from almost all vital information. If you intend some feature of your site to help a visitor, it should be very easily accessible. This precludes lengthy lists of information and unlabeled links.
3. Time: This relates closely to the last point; imagine that someone has only five minutes to get on your website, find what they need, then leave. Can do they do it (or at least come close)? This obviously does not apply to web pages like the Common Application's site, where the user must commit hours of work. However, even for sites like www.commonapp.org it is important that a user be able to access their work in expedited fashion.
As the author points out in the beginning of his piece, the only reason for your web site's existence (and thus its design) is to solve a customer's problem. This is exactly the driving principle behind any product design. The product exists only to fill a niche in the market, to fulfill some customers' desire.
A good web designer recognizes that, like consumer products, a web site must include affordances, good mapping, and an easily-recognized purpose.
2. What points do you feel are most important?
Point 2, A Man from Mars can't figure out what your web site is about in less than four seconds.
A web site's purpose is to display a given quantity of information in a condensed, easy-to-read format. I am immediately intimidated by a web-site with no clear purpose and lacking a sense of direction.
Point 8, concerning Mystery Meat Navigation. Buttons and links without labels aggravate me. How am I supposed to find what I need? Are the buttons unimportant? What if the ONLY thing I'm looking for is simply unlabeled?
3. Create your own list of important design factors for a webpage.
1. Clarity: A good website is uncluttered. It has few, if any extraneous materials. Advertising is carefully placed and kept out of the way of important content. There is plenty of white or otherwise high-contrast space to keep the viewer's eyes focused on important information. Simple sites look better!
2. Accesibility: I feel that at a good website, you are between 1 and 3 clicks away from almost all vital information. If you intend some feature of your site to help a visitor, it should be very easily accessible. This precludes lengthy lists of information and unlabeled links.
3. Time: This relates closely to the last point; imagine that someone has only five minutes to get on your website, find what they need, then leave. Can do they do it (or at least come close)? This obviously does not apply to web pages like the Common Application's site, where the user must commit hours of work. However, even for sites like www.commonapp.org it is important that a user be able to access their work in expedited fashion.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Wikipedia: The Know-It-All
1. What do you think are the author's main points in this article?
I think that Schiff's basic summation is that while a fascinating experiment, Wikipedia is not to be particularly trusted. The site has merits, among them its ability to include many, many points of view in its articles, but most of its merits work against its credibility in some way as well.
2. An important part of credible writing is selecting good supporting evidence. Select a passage from this article that illustrates the effective use of supporting detail. Explain why you think it is particularly effective.
"Wikipedia may be the world’s most ambitious vanity press. There are two hundred thousand registered users on the English-language site, of whom about thirty-three hundred—fewer than two per cent—are responsible for seventy per cent of the work. The site allows you to compare contributors by the number of edits they have made, by the number of articles that have been judged by community vote to be outstanding (these “featured” articles often appear on the site’s home page), and by hourly activity, in graph form. A seventeen-year-old P. G. Wodehouse fan who specializes in British peerages leads the featured-article pack, with fifty-eight entries. A twenty-four-year-old University of Toronto graduate is the site’s premier contributor. Since composing his first piece, on the Panama Canal, in 2001, he has written or edited more than seventy-two thousand articles."
This article states a potentially controversial opinion, that "Wikipedia may the world's most ambitious vanity press," then the author supports that claim with figures from the site itself. The figures are astonishingly weighted to favor the author's opinion.
3. Throughout the article, the author compares Wikipedia to the Encyclopedia Britannica, but not specifically on design. How would you compare the two encyclopedias from a design perspective?
Both encyclopedias are immense "volumes," but Wikipedia is far more vast. Its design is far more nested than Britannica's; it cross-references to itself far more often. In fact, linking one Wikipedia to another is highly encouraged. In this way, the site can be overwhelming and unrefined. Britannica contains a huge body of material, but it is laid out in a very linear fashion. The design is straight-forward and easy to reference. Wikipedia's nature does not lend itself to an easily-referenced source. It is a crude and unfortunately unreliable source that can change literally at a whim. Britannica has the advantage of years of legitimate background research and peer review.
I think that Schiff's basic summation is that while a fascinating experiment, Wikipedia is not to be particularly trusted. The site has merits, among them its ability to include many, many points of view in its articles, but most of its merits work against its credibility in some way as well.
2. An important part of credible writing is selecting good supporting evidence. Select a passage from this article that illustrates the effective use of supporting detail. Explain why you think it is particularly effective.
"Wikipedia may be the world’s most ambitious vanity press. There are two hundred thousand registered users on the English-language site, of whom about thirty-three hundred—fewer than two per cent—are responsible for seventy per cent of the work. The site allows you to compare contributors by the number of edits they have made, by the number of articles that have been judged by community vote to be outstanding (these “featured” articles often appear on the site’s home page), and by hourly activity, in graph form. A seventeen-year-old P. G. Wodehouse fan who specializes in British peerages leads the featured-article pack, with fifty-eight entries. A twenty-four-year-old University of Toronto graduate is the site’s premier contributor. Since composing his first piece, on the Panama Canal, in 2001, he has written or edited more than seventy-two thousand articles."
This article states a potentially controversial opinion, that "Wikipedia may the world's most ambitious vanity press," then the author supports that claim with figures from the site itself. The figures are astonishingly weighted to favor the author's opinion.
3. Throughout the article, the author compares Wikipedia to the Encyclopedia Britannica, but not specifically on design. How would you compare the two encyclopedias from a design perspective?
Both encyclopedias are immense "volumes," but Wikipedia is far more vast. Its design is far more nested than Britannica's; it cross-references to itself far more often. In fact, linking one Wikipedia to another is highly encouraged. In this way, the site can be overwhelming and unrefined. Britannica contains a huge body of material, but it is laid out in a very linear fashion. The design is straight-forward and easy to reference. Wikipedia's nature does not lend itself to an easily-referenced source. It is a crude and unfortunately unreliable source that can change literally at a whim. Britannica has the advantage of years of legitimate background research and peer review.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Wiki Article
I am thinking about expanding a stub about ancient Egyptian chariotry. I will be checking the library and other online sources for information about the history and design of chariots in ancient Egypt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chariotry_in_ancient_Egypt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chariotry_in_ancient_Egypt
Organization And Preparation
1. What do you think are the author's three most important points?
1st point: Be prepared. The more time put into preparation, the better the presentation.
2nd point: Be purposeful. Fill your presentation with relevant, pertinent information, not garbage.
3rd point: Connect with your audience. Do your 'homework,' be aware of "why you were asked" to be there.
2. How might you apply his advice to your own presentation?
I will certainly be prepared and practiced. I will try to understand exactly what is desired of the presentation and to connect with my audience.
3. What do you think presentation has in common with design?
I am very interested, in light of recent experience, in the design of medical instrumentation. The factors that must be considered when designing instrumentation are legion. how readily must the instrument be usable? Where must it fit? Can it be handled properly? Comfortably? Is it durable? Can it be distinguished from other similar instruments. Surgeons can be very, very frustrated when their equipment does not function absolutely perfectly or they are handed the wrong instrument.
1st point: Be prepared. The more time put into preparation, the better the presentation.
2nd point: Be purposeful. Fill your presentation with relevant, pertinent information, not garbage.
3rd point: Connect with your audience. Do your 'homework,' be aware of "why you were asked" to be there.
2. How might you apply his advice to your own presentation?
I will certainly be prepared and practiced. I will try to understand exactly what is desired of the presentation and to connect with my audience.
3. What do you think presentation has in common with design?
I am very interested, in light of recent experience, in the design of medical instrumentation. The factors that must be considered when designing instrumentation are legion. how readily must the instrument be usable? Where must it fit? Can it be handled properly? Comfortably? Is it durable? Can it be distinguished from other similar instruments. Surgeons can be very, very frustrated when their equipment does not function absolutely perfectly or they are handed the wrong instrument.
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